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The report predicts a major economic transformation for Africa and the need for a new economic growth model. It emphasizes the critical role of emerging technologies in helping Africa to overcome its old development challenges and to provide water security, low carbon energy security, food security, healthcare, education and financial inclusion at the BoP. As the most promising technologies to address those challenges Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, Robotics and 3D Printing technology are identified.

Recent studies have suggested that open data policies could deliver significant economic benefits for both developed and developing countries. The African Development Bank has spearheaded the promotion and facilitation of open data policies in Africa. In 2012, when the implementation of the open data approach was still in its infancy in many countries, the Statistics Department of the African Development Bank launched the Africa Information Highway (AIH) initiative. This provided a data publishing platform for all its 54 African regional member countries. This paper was commissioned as a subsequent stage of this work.

This paper provides examples of how 2SCALE tackled youth inclusion in its partnerships. 2SCALE has been experimenting with various options to support young producers and entrepreneurs in the agribusiness sector. Making agriculture interesting to youth requires making it attractive and remunerative by having access to land, finance and technologies in order to modernise. Besides production another alternative for youth inclusion was explored: specialised service delivery to value chain actors.

This volume is divided into three main parts. Part I reveals the progress being made by African countries toward the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Part II presents cross-country comparative indicators for gender (section 1), poverty (section 2), and the environment (section 3). Part III provides more detailed data on each of these three themes across each of the 54 African countries.

The publication reports that the ability of sub-Saharan Africa’s economies to generate enough jobs for its young and growing population rests on the successful implementation of urgent reforms to boost productivity.